{"title":"The lexical content of high-stakes national exams in French, German, and Spanish in England","authors":"Amber Dudley, Emma Marsden","doi":"10.1111/flan.12751","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Surprisingly little is known about the number and frequency level of words that beginner-to-low-intermediate 16-year-old learners of French, German, and Spanish are expected to know when taking high-stakes national exams in England. This study presents exploratory analyses of the lexical content of the listening and reading tests of these exams, a corpus totaling 116,647 running words. Specifically, it seeks to understand the number and frequency level of words that (a) this demographic seems to be expected to know and (b) could be needed for awarding organizations to create exams year-on-year. Key findings include that the proportion of low(er)-frequency words in the corpus of exam papers seemed large, given the stage of the learners and the purpose of the assessments. Critically, these low(er)-frequency words changed at a high rate between papers, likely incurring a heavy reliance on the lexical inferencing abilities of these relatively inexperienced language learners.</p>","PeriodicalId":47560,"journal":{"name":"Foreign Language Annals","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/flan.12751","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Foreign Language Annals","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/flan.12751","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Surprisingly little is known about the number and frequency level of words that beginner-to-low-intermediate 16-year-old learners of French, German, and Spanish are expected to know when taking high-stakes national exams in England. This study presents exploratory analyses of the lexical content of the listening and reading tests of these exams, a corpus totaling 116,647 running words. Specifically, it seeks to understand the number and frequency level of words that (a) this demographic seems to be expected to know and (b) could be needed for awarding organizations to create exams year-on-year. Key findings include that the proportion of low(er)-frequency words in the corpus of exam papers seemed large, given the stage of the learners and the purpose of the assessments. Critically, these low(er)-frequency words changed at a high rate between papers, likely incurring a heavy reliance on the lexical inferencing abilities of these relatively inexperienced language learners.
期刊介绍：
Dedicated to the advancement of language teaching and learning, Foreign Language Annals (FLA) seeks to serve the professional interests of classroom instructors, researchers, and administrators concerned with the learning and teaching of languages at all levels of instruction. The journal welcomes submissions of the highest quality that report empirical or theoretical research on language learning or teaching, that describe innovative and successful practice and methods, and/or that are relevant to the concerns and issues of the profession. FLA focuses primarily on language education for languages other than English.
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